Writing into the Dark Before the Dawn (Why I Had to Fall Redux)

Listen to Why I Had to Fall


Listen to My Vagrant Heart


Listen to Dark Before the Dawn


It's February.

February of the year 2012.

How did that happen?

I've got 5 more songs from Look Alive to revisit here, and given my snail-like pace of one (or less) per month, by the time I'm done we'll have new music to over-analyze. So maybe that's a good thing?

Yeah. It's a good thing. I'm sticking with that.

So today's song is Why I Had to Fall.

The first inkling of this song comes in February of 2006. Six years ago. How strange is that?

It shows up as the following couplet:

"It will come clear
Why you had to fall"

Over the next week of what was an important burst of writing, pieces of Why I Had to Fall weave in and out of another song, My Vagrant Heart.

And you know what? I'm going to post the demo of My Vagrant Heart above for no reason other than I just listened to it for the first time in about four years. And I like it. And it feels like a companion piece to Why I Had to Fall. The demo is from the living room session I did with Jay in July of 2006 and My Vagrant Heart was part of the original group of songs that eventually became Look Alive. It was (rightly) jettisoned at some point in favor of the some of the stronger material that followed.

How about that. Spontaneous sharing of media.

Anyway, poring over those couple of weeks in early 2006 is informative. I can watch my writing turn a corner from what it was for Burn Rome Burn to a sort of middle state, something closer to what it's become in Paper Arrows, but not quite there. I remember very distinctly feeling like I was writing into the dark, writing about things I couldn't see but could feel... not quite confident or strong enough to turn the light on and figure it out, but more throwing out things that moved me, images that evoked what I was feeling, without really getting to the truth of the matter.

That's what the lyrics to Why I Had to Fall are. A bunch of evocative images that wound up hanging together in the end, almost by accident.

This couple of weeks is also interesting because I was simultaneously writing these "new" "acoustic" songs (like Why I Had to Fall and My Vagrant Heart) alongside material that would eventually become the last Burn Rome Burn EP, recorded in 2007, but never released.

So on March 6, 2006, I have both the finalized lyrics for Why I Had to Fall, and the mostly final lyrics for the song Dark Before the Dawn.

Sometimes I wish I had Dark Before the Dawn back. This one was right one the edge, right before I finally got the courage to write what I was feeling and thinking with the light on. So it sounds like a close call, like something that could be even better. I'm willing to live with the vagueness of Why I Had to Fall, because I think that's actually part of the theme of it. With Dark Before the Dawn, I was writing about something very specific that I couldn't quite bring myself to say in a clear way.

So in the interest of... why the fuck not... I'll post the rarely-before heard Burn Rome Burn recording of Dark Before the Dawn. Which I actually like a lot, even if I just missed on the actual song. We recorded it in largely the same way Jay and I recorded Look Alive: tracked mostly in the same attic, mixed at the same studio. A friend/colleague of Jay's named Lindsay sings on it and it features some of the more restrained and beautiful playing by the whole band.

Speaking of the attic: back to Why I Had to Fall.

I love the recording of this song. Darren, Jay and I congregated in the attic and spent a little time playing through it. Darren was on banjo, Jay on mandolin, me on guitar. Once we had a suitable arrangement, we set up some mics and went after it live, all together, including background vocals. I think we did 5 or 6 takes at most and the only overdubs were Darren and Jay layering another set of backgrounds to fill out the sound.

So it's got a cool old-timey sound with lots of ambient noise (the highway!) and the feel of a bunch of guys playing together in a room. All the lead vocals are live and unedited, which was watershed for me. Things are slightly (but appropriately) out of tune. During the instrumental part, you can hear Jay sing along with his mandolin part on one line.

Very cool stuff.

So there you go... three songs, three different sessions... all from the same couple eventful days in 2006. Nearly six years ago.

*****************

WHY I HAD TO FALL

And so the waiting begins
And outside the winter settles in
I'm still waiting on my wings
And outside the twilight starts to sing

It's why I had to fall
It's why I had to fall

We've all got something that makes it okay
Seems like it works less every day
So go to sleep and wait for dawn
Or pack your bags and just move on

It's why I had to fall
It's why I had to fall

They say "Sometimes you fly"
They say "Hey, you're still alive"
But while they're singing "hallelujah"
They'll put the nails right through ya

It's why I had to fall
It's why I had to fall

jbg

Hope is a Fire (Come Home Redux)

And we're still working our way through the songs on Look Alive...

As a side note, 2012 is off to a fantastic start. We're currently climbing through the details of signing a recording contract with an indie label out of Madison, WI. I'll spare you the nitty gritty but suffice to say we're excited by the prospects of having a bigger team out there pushing our next release (which will be finished in the next few months). In addition, there is interest from a large publisher of Classics-related literature in distributing The Odyssey with more substantial and representative packaging (including all lyrics). Which would be amazing. Still some things to figure out here as well but I'm very happy with the direction it's going.

So... as long as the Mayans were as shitty with their eschatology as they were with their views on human sacrifice, 2012 is looking up.

On to Come Home, the 5th song on Look Alive.

I've written before about the competing sets of songs that comprise Look Alive, and this song is the demarcation of the two: In my notebook I see that on a certain day in July of 2006 I wrote the following:

*******

Solo Record/Project

Resurrection
Look Alive
Why I Had to Fall
Travesty in Blue
December Static
Oh My Vagrant Heart

+4 to 6 More!

(Ode to Billy Martin) >->

********

No idea what that last thing is, but it amuses me.

Anyway, I'm thinking this was like the day after Jay and I recorded those demoes in my living room, and it was finally starting to dawn on me that I had a group of moving solo tunes with which to work.

But, as noted, I needed more.

So that very day in July of 2006, I started writing with a certain confidence and directness lacking in just about everything I'd written previously.

Not to say that my prior output was bad: a lot of it I still like very much.

It was just... something had changed. Whether it was already the benefits (or prospects) of working with Jay, working on my own... or the fact that I was completely fractured from my week-old separation from my first wife... something had changed.

It was Dylan that said "When you have nothing, you have nothing left to lose" and while that might be a bit dramatic (I still had my dog, for instance), that's what it felt like.

It felt like I had nothing to lose by dropping all the bullshit constructs and cleverness and just... saying what I meant.

So instead of writing with my typical allusive- and illusive-ness, I started writing exactly what I felt.

And the result was Come Home.

I don't think I need to explicate the lyrics. They say exactly what they mean, clear as day. Maybe the only subtlety is in the "chorus" at the end, with the variation of "I know that you're coming home/I know that you're coming home/I hope that you're coming home/Come home."

I'm really proud of that. It seems small and inconsequential but I think it so perfectly captures the incremental steps of doubt that creep in to loss... from "know" to "hope" to just... "come home."

When we went to record it, we actually started with a Radiohead tune as our guide. Whether or not that's obvious from the result, I don't know. But I love everything about the recording... the guitar tone, the hook, the background vocals, the mandolin, the two drum kits... I remember hearing this song come out of the speakers at mix and thinking "what the FUCK is that?"

And it might be my favorite song to play live.

It feels like an open wound.

But one that is being confronted full on and, because of that, is ultimately allowed to heal.

Some day.

Hopefully.

***************

COME HOME

It's been barely a week
Since you left me to fight alone
So I face down the night and then
Watch the sun again, again

And I sing myself sick
Lose my voice to the swollen sky
When the rain hits an open wound
The pain lets you know you're alive, alive

I know that you're coming home
I know that you're coming home
I hope that you're coming home
Come home
Come home
Come home
Come home

jbg

Again and Again (Again)

Listen to the record version:


A quiet thought on one of the quietest songs on Look Alive, Again and Again.

A quick review of my writing journal tells me this was written on October 18 and 19, 2006, very quickly, with almost no revisions.

As far as I can tell, it was the last song written for Look Alive other than When You Left, which was written almost as an afterthought as we were recording.  So Again and Again completed the group of songs we had when we started tracking.  In fact, I think in my cryptic notes I can even see where I got some recording dates from Jay... Weird.

Also weird is that I can see how I was simultaneously writing tunes for what became Look Alive, and still writing new material for Burn Rome Burn.  In fact, the creation of Again and Again is kind of folded into my work on BRB tunes called Slowly and Falling Into, which we never really got together.

I really enjoy revisiting this song because in both creation and recording it marks a turning point for me.

Its simplicity is really an emblem of me getting fully confident with both lyrical and musical directness in a way I had never been before.

And the performance on the recording... it was done in one take, all live, in the attic overlooking the highway where we recorded... in the second verse, if you listen carefully after I sing the word "faces," you can hear the Blue Line go by quietly in the background, like the city making a guest appearance on background vocals.

Everything about the song and take screams intimacy (kind of an oxymoron of an image for a quiet song, but still).

Truthfully, I envisioned all of what became Look Alive sounding like this song.  I'm forever grateful that we pushed some of the material into a more upbeat full band setting and even more grateful that we left this song exactly the way we did, a perfect record of an unsteady marriage of hope and heartbreak slipping towards the latter.

AGAIN AND AGAIN

Meet me beneath the moon
We'll have our worries on the powerlines
And forget about the days
When we lost our way
And start over again
And again and again and again

Meet me beside the lake
We'll wash our faces in the waters
And dry our swollen eyes
In the golden sun
And start over again
And again and again and again

Meet me in the bed
We'll burn our fears with a midnight flame
And scatter the remains
With trembling lips
And start over again
And again and again and again
And again and again and again...

jbg

Three Chords and the Truth (Turn Redux)

Listen to the record version:


Harlan Howard, a famous songwriter, is said to have described country music as "Three chords and the truth."

I came across this quote in a biography of Hank Williams Sr., which I was reading the first weekend in August of 2006, when I wrote Turn, the third song on Look Alive.

And that very quote is written clearly in my writing journal next to the scribbling that became Turn, which was part of a three day writing binge that also produced a revised and finalized Skeletonskinandsky, and the quiet song Fight.

In case you're scoring at home (what a terrible pun), the chords for Turn are F, c minor, and Bb major.

And that's it.

Just three chords.

I find it interesting because Howard's quote is so simple that it's easy to miss what it actually means.

I also find it interesting that this is almost exactly the point at which my songwriting underwent a transformation from vague to direct.  From trying to write around the truth, to embracing the truth head on, as plainly as possible.

On Turn (and several others), I may have swung a little bit too far to the direct and simple but... I needed to.  These songs are so true, sometimes it hurts to listen to them.

I was trying not to turn my back on love, desperately.  Futilely, as I would later find out.

Anyway, the recording of this tune (typical for the Look Alive sessions) was like opening a new toy on Christmas morning.  I wish I had a demo of the original version, on which I was consciously imitating (gulp) Coldplay.  And boy, was it every bit as boring as a Coldplay tune.  Just straight eighth notes and three chords.  For three minutes.  Gag.

But, as happened repeatedly during these sessions, it changed radically once Jay and Darren got their hands on it... and we very consciously embraced a Motown production aesthetic.

Some percussion, a slightly out-of-tune piano (remedied during the mix by adding a flange effect, to our great delight)... some simple guitar parts and finally some fun layered counterpoint vocals.

And Turn had gone from Harlan Howard and Hank Sr. to Coldplay to Berry Gordy.

An unlikely transformation.

But when you're trying to get to the truth, you do what you have to do...

*************

TURN

Whispers in the dark
The night is calling out
To all the lonesome hearts

Flickering in starts
The big star's burning low
And soon it will be gone

When love is overcome
When love is on the ropes
Don't turn your back on love

I won't turn my back on love

Under purple skies
Chicago's crying out
It echoes through the streets

And settles in the dust
Along the silent lake
Beneath the silver moon

I won't turn my back on love

jbg

How a Lyrical Crutch is Born (Travesty in Blue redux)

Read the Look Alive album recap.

Listen to the Travesty demo:

Listen to the record version:

Well then.

On to revisiting the second tune on Look Alive, Travesty in Blue.

I'm lucky enough to still have the living room demo of this tune, recorded in July of 2006, which I've posted above.  What a trip to listen to...  similar to the song Look Alive, the transformation of this tune from sparse solo acoustic to full-on produced band was very very important to me as a writer and Paper Arrows as a project.

Here was a song I had around since... 2005 according to my writing journal and suddenly it went from this quiet contemplative thing to a bouncy pop tune and... if my memory is correct it's one of the first songs of mine I heard with a piano part taking the lead as a rhythm instrument/texture.  The construction of this one was pretty indicative of the album process as a whole... I came in and heard a fully-realized rhythm section behind the song for the first time and my heart just welled up with happiness and wonder... I remember recording the acoustic guitar in a take or two, an electric part... the vocals very very quickly including backgrounds... and then watching Jay record a cool slide part.  Darren had added the distorted Fender Rhodes in the attic and the piano at Gravity and I remember sitting in the control room at Gravity watching Manny mix the whole thing, adding the cool vocal echo effects...

I wrote a pretty good overall chronology of the Look Alive project here at the time (also linked above)... another crazy thing to read given my memories of what I was going through at the time and where my life and Paper Arrows have gone since.  A lot of the wonder at how great our sessions were is there and quite touching, as is some of personal bitterness I guess at the subject matter...

The subject matter.  What a weird song lyrically.  I found the first time I wrote the phrase "travesty in blue": December 12, 2001.  As in five years before we recorded the song and (gulp) nearly ten years ago.  I remember very clearly walking from the apartment on Magnolia to Dominick's one weekday morning, horribly wrecked from whatever we had been doing the night before, wearing jeans, a blue t-shirt, and a blue flannel shirt and thinking I looked like a travesty in blue... and it just stuck in my head.  Of course I subsequently realized I was probably unconsciously spoofing Rhapsody in Blue.

Anyway, I didn't even start to write the Paper Arrows version of Travesty in Blue until 2004 and finally finished it in 2005.  Looking back at my writing then, I can see this turning point to the material that would become the Look Alive album and Travesty is right at the middle of it.  I was grabbing onto images that evoked something moving, some sort of emotion, but I wasn't quite strong or confident or aware enough to connect them to concrete things...

That's one of the things that makes Look Alive so interesting to me: there's this dichotomy between the five songs written before Jay and I decided to record an album (December Static, Look Alive, Travesty in Blue, Why I Had to Fall, Skeletonskinandsky) and the five songs written after (Turn, Again and Again, Come Home, Fight, When You Left).  The early five have this impressionistic bent to them that I described above, and the latter five are just brutally direct.

Or couse the two sets of tunes also straddle another event: being left by my ex-wife.  I can't imagine that has anything to do with the difference.

But the interesting thing is that for all Travesty in Blue works alongside the more direct songs about loss, I didn't really write it with anything particular in mind.  Was it some subconscious unhappiness?  Probably.  But the first lines are actually about moving my sister to an apartment near Montrose and Damen.  We were loading her stuff up some stairs, and there was this weird picture on the wall that looked like me.  Or, like an elven caricature of me.  Actually, I think there were two people in the picture and other looked like my sister, which made it doubly weird.

And I remember at the exact time I noticed the picture, there was this light on the wall right next to it cast from a window that looked like a cross.  And it was just really striking.  One of those weird moments in life where you're moved or take notice but don't know exactly why...

And in the second verse, we get to "travesty in blue" and it's not really a concrete idea it's just... this picture of a feeling I had on and off for years that I was losing.  Losing something.  I thought it was myself and my dreams, but it turned out to be something different.  Or something more.  Or maybe even less.

So the word "blue" has become this crutch for me lyrically and still is.  There were Burn Rome Burn songs with "blue,"(there was even a BRB song CALLED The Blue).  It's made an appearance on every Paper Arrows album and even on the new song we recorded just two weeks ago as well as in a couple other tunes that are candidates for the next session.

So maybe it's time to put a prohibition on it.

Maybe the blue has run its course...

Or maybe it still serves me a purpose and helps me see my life and creativity as a line rather than a series of unrelated struggles.

Maybe it's the connection to that me of 2001, who seems so far away from who and what I am today.

Maybe I can benefit from trying to figure out exactly what the blue is, where it goes, and why it keeps coming back to me.

I like that.

**********

TRAVESTY IN BLUE

The picture where we moved you looked like me
And somehow the light arranged itself in a "t"
They always take at the start what matters the most
They always shoot first and ask questions once you're a ghost

It's raining glass on the lake tonight
As clouds divide the nightmare sky
And lightening strikes the Tower's heights
It echoes...

I saw him hanging on Western Avenue
His eyes were born in a travesty of blue
And the empty car lots gave way to something else
And the pavement cracks grew up as winter fell

It's raining glass on the lake tonight
As clouds divide the nightmare sky
And lightening strikes the Tower's heights
It echoes...

It's raining stars on the lake tonight
As clouds divide the nightmare sky
And lightening strikes the Tower's spikes
It echoes...


jbg